When the great depositories of art in Greece and her western colonies fell under the control of the Romans, the villas of the rich in the metropolis and chief cities were converted into great halls of art. Earlier, martial Rome, which, according to the expression of Plutarch, knew no ornaments but arms and spoils, furnished to the unwarlike and luxurious spectators no pleasing or unalarming spectacle. "To melt brass, and breathe into it the soul of art, or to create living forms in marble," the Roman had not learned. "His art was government and war." Etrurian artists had furnished him with what religion required, of wood or clay, sufficient for all the devotional sensibility he possessed. But after Marcellus had turned the rude minds of the citizens to the admiration of the works he obtained by conquest over Syracuse, all military leaders became anxious to add splendor to their triumphs by trophies of art. Thus, in the course of a century, most of the finest art extant traveled to Rome, at first a metropolitan decoration, but anon, an ambitious ornament to private dwellings. At length, the common soldier learned to despise the temples of the gods; to confound what was sacred with what was profane; to covet fine sculptures and rich furniture, and to nourish a mercenary ambition, which became a new pretext for violence in war, and extravagance in peace. As in the Republic, Lucullus and others regarded the masterpieces of the Greeks as the fairest embellishments of their rural mansions, so the imperial Cæsars grasped at all within reach, and never had enough. Soon there dwelt in Rome as many statues as men; and the treasures disinterred in modern times at Tibur and Tusculum, on the Alban Mount, at Antium, and elsewhere in the neighborhood of the original seat of power, indicate that the surrounding region was not less rich than the capital itself. But a profound sense of art was never created at Rome, and, notwithstanding all the variety of excellence they brought together from afar, not one distinguished Roman artist lives on the record of fame.